Influence of street characteristics, driver category and car performance on urban driving patterns

doi:10.1016/j.trd.2005.01.001

Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment

Volume 10, Issue 3, May 2005, Pages 213-229

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2005.01.001 Get rights and content

Abstract

Driving patterns (i.e., speed, acceleration and choice of gears) influence exhaust emissions and fuel consumption. The aim here is to obtain a better understanding of the variables that affect driving patterns, by determining the extent they are influenced by street characteristics and/or driver-car categories. A data set of over 14,000 driving patterns registered in actual traffic is used. The relationship between driving patterns and recorded variables is analysed. The most complete effect is found for the variables describing the street environment: occurrence and density of junctions controlled by traffic lights, speed limit, street function and type of neighbourhood. A fairly large effect is found for car performance, expressed in terms of the power-to-mass ratio. For elderly drivers, the average speed systematically decreases for all street types and stop time systematically increases on arterials. The results have implications for the assessment of environmental effects through appropriate street categorisation in emission models, as well as the possible reduction of environmental effects through better traffic planning and management, driver education and car design.

Introduction

Analysis of vehicle operational characteristics, or driving patterns, in relation to emissions and fuel consumption, generally focuses on the vehicle, the driver, or the traffic environment. It often has the objective of improving vehicle testing or using knowledge of driving patterns to improve the engine and the emission control system in order to improve the environmental performance of vehicles. Such research has largely focused on constructing and describing representative driving cycles (e.g., André et al., 1995, Esteves-Booth et al., 2001). Other studies have focused on drivers, and on the possibility of influencing them to alter their driving patterns, and thus reduce emissions and fuel consumption. It has been shown that aggressive driving increases emissions and fuel consumption (De Vlieger, 1997). Recently, the term EcoDriving has become popular for more environmentally friendly driving (Smith, 1999). Finally, traffic research aims to study the effect of traffic planning and street design on driving patterns. Important issues are how various street characteristics, such as kind of junction, street type and traffic calming measures, affect emissions (Boulter et al., 2001, Hallmark et al., 2002, Vàrhelyi, 2002, Smidfelt Rosqvist, 2003). The aim here is to examine the effect on driving behaviour of different driver categories and the characteristics of the local environment in which the car is driven.

Section snippets

Background

Through a collaborative effort between the Swedish National Road Administration, the Department of Technology and Society, Lund Institute of Technology, Lund University and Rototest AB a study of real traffic driving patterns was conducted in 1998 (Ericsson, 2000). Five cars of different sizes and performance levels were equipped with data logging devices to register speed and engine parameters, and with GPS receivers to register location within the street network. Twenty-nine families used one

Trade-off between model complexity, interpretability and predictive accuracy

The relationship between external conditions and driving pattern characteristics is complex. It comprises interlinked psychological and mechanical processes that, though far from completely understood, are likely to be highly non-linear and involve significant internal feedback. Thus, to represent the data-generating process accurately, we would need a very complex model involving many estimated parameters.

The definitions and classifications of the variables presented in Table 2 represent a

Results

The parameters are estimated for each of the eight driving pattern characteristics. For each estimation several parameters prove to be statistically significant, although the explanatory power is generally low. The explanatory power of average speed is much higher than that of other driving pattern characteristics.

Table 3, Table 4, Table 5, Table 6, Table 7, Table 8, Table 9, Table 10, one for each of the driving pattern characteristics, describe the size of the effect, in terms of typical

Conclusions

The results of this study indicate that street and traffic environment affect driving behaviour in connection with driver variables and car performance. The most comprehensive effects were found to be related to four variables describing the street environment: occurrence and density of junctions controlled by traffic lights, speed limit, street function, and type of neighbourhood. Furthermore, a fairly large effect was found for car performance in terms of the power/mass ratio. These results

Acknowledgement

Acknowledgements to the Swedish National Road Administration for financially supporting this study.

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